You're Wicked With the Clutch
by Totally-Out-Of-It
Summary: Everything in Dom's life has led to this moment – the moment he crashes his car into the bay. Ironically, he feels only relief. Waking up in his dad's old office, he realizes that he's finally dead. Well, until a cocky speed junky with a thing for heralding life shows up and ruins his day by saying he's only dying, not dead. And Damn it. This was not the plan. Dom/Brian HappyEnding
1. Chapter 1

He wanted this so much, wanted the way the car jerked under his feet, wanted the screech of his tires, wanted the cry of the engine in his ears. There was no one around, no other cars this late at night, and he was pushing the engine hard, harder than he should, harder than he had in years. He glared out at the dark water of the bay and shifted gears almost before he hit the clutch, heart pounding steady in his chest in the wake of the adrenaline. The energy and emotion he usually experienced behind the wheel were gone and he just felt numb inside. Even his beloved engine couldn't bring him relief.

He didn't know what else to do. After the sun had set, he just didn't know. So he drove and drove and drove, and it wasn't helping. It was supposed to help, and it wasn't. He'd already lost so much, and now he'd even lost the joy of driving, of an army of horses at his command. And he felt his resolve harden further the longer he drove.

He wanted the empty street, no witnesses. His only company was one lone car going the opposite direction on the other side of the median, out of harm's way. He wanted the way his charger drifted toward the rail, the way the car tried to convince him not to but finally gave in. He wanted the crash.

And yet he couldn't stop the way his chest choked on fear with the final swerve and the way his foot let off the gas just before the crash. Not that it made a difference. He was still doing eighty. He still collided with the metal guard rail and crushed it like tinfoil. But he was angry at himself for the hesitation.

The charger grated on the remains of the rail and then careened into open evening air, and then it didn't matter if his foot was on the gas or not. There was no way to stop. He hit the water.

And then he woke up.

Jerking up in his chair, pulling himself off the desk in front of him, Dom had to take a moment to fully realize he was no longer in the car, in the bay. He surveyed the room, heart racing in his chest, trying to place himself. He was alone, accompanied only by the frames on the walls, the books on the shelf, and the desk set in front of him. This was his father's office at the Toretto Racetrack.

The frames on the walls didn't match, some brown, some black, some in between, and they held widely different documents – the health code approval, the certification for passing structural inspections, the print out from TripAdvisor about the track being a must-see item when visiting the city, and the paper award for the Toretto team winning the national races. Not matching was kind of his father's thing.

The bookcase was filled with books on business and racing and mechanics, and there was a half-dead plant on the middle shelf that his father always forgot to water. Dom stood and looked away from the memory of a dozen plants in trashcans and instead looked over at the photos his father kept on a filing cabinet. The frames of these at least tried to match, and from within them, he saw his family. Dom, his sister, his mother, his father, their cars – because the cars were like family too. They were all there, in need of a dusting but in plain view for everyone to see when they walked into the office.

The desk was old, gray and worn from use, but the calendar that took up most of the surface was new. The word 'January' stared up intensely in thick black letters on a white background, and Dom frowned just as intensely back.

It was all exactly as Dom remembered it. Except it wasn't January, and his father had been dead for six years. Which could only mean one of two things: either Dom had fallen asleep on his father's desk and dreamt the last six years of hell, which was unlikely, or he had succeeded in what he planned to do by driving his car off the bridge. He was dead. And that was far more likely.

In his chest, his heart pounded with the clarity of truth. He'd died when he hit the water. He was dead. It was quick and he remembered no pain, so it actually went smoother than he'd expected. But if he was dead, then why was he in his father's office? Was the afterlife full of familiar buildings? That could be rough.

It was all just as Dom remembered it, and yet the office gave him a cold, empty feeling, and he backed up to the door stiffly. He needed to get out of the stifling pocket of nostalgia. He couldn't stand there with all those smiling faces staring up at him. Their eyes seemed to follow him the whole time and he just couldn't handle that right now, not after he threw away the life they all fought for.

Out in the hall, paintings hung on the wall of different locales and different seasons, those stupid generic things you saw in office buildings and hospital hallways, and Dom hated them too. They meant nothing to him, to anyone.

There was another room on his left, but he bypassed it without a glance. His eyes were focused on the end of the hall, where he could see light pouring in through the glass block window of the exit door, and despite the seriousness of the situation, all he could think of was the sky. Would it look different in death or would it still be blue?

Death. Dom stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He'd killed himself. Shouldn't he be in some kind of hell or something? What if he opened the door and found something worse than the life he'd lived? What if the sky was fire and the ground ended just on the other side of the door? What if he was stuck in this hallway and this office forever? Maybe that was a kind of hell.

Stuck in a hallway without personality. Stuck in an office filled with his father's memories, memories already six years cold. Stuck with his mother and his sister smiling up at him from cold photographs. Stuck with always seeing what he used to have before it all went wrong. That had been torment enough in life.

Setting his jaw, Dom turned the handle and opened the door.

Much to his disappointment, the sky was a normal pale blue and there were even fluffy clouds drifting by. He was at the top of the stands that surrounded the track, which had always been where his father had preferred his office. The ability to step into the next room and get the best view of the races and hear the commentator who sat in there was a perk of the job, he'd always said. Let the lazy and the lame have their offices on the ground floor.

There was no one in the stands or anywhere else in sight. Not a single person outside of Dominic Toretto. The emptiness took the breath from his lungs and he slowly stepped down into the rows, stumbling slightly. Each step was hard and he had to hold onto the backs of the chairs so he wouldn't fall.

It wasn't what he expected. He had imagined the ground would try to hold onto him, try to suck him down. He imagined the sun would burn, the wind would whip. He imagined jeers from the faces of people he missed. He imagined darkness. And the fact that this place was none of that scared him more than he could express. It was too normal, too much like the world he'd tried to leave behind.

He was all alone in the place where everything went wrong. He felt no wind and no heat from the sun. He heard no bird song, no airplanes, no voices. The ground was solid beneath him, but it didn't feel real. The emptiness clenched his chest in its muffling grip and he fell to a knee on the stair landing, holding the railing for support.

It was not the hell he'd imagined, but damn it was fitting, and it was just as painful.

Sound.

Not just any sound. A familiar sound. Dominic sucked in the first full breath he'd managed since opening the door and snapped his head up to look for the source of the engine sound. It revved and shifted through the gears and revved again and roared, but there was no car on the track below. Confused, Dom narrowed his eyes when he thought he saw a glint of light.

The sound grew louder and louder, and before Dom's eyes, a car started to materialize on the track. It was no racecar. It was a Nissan Skyline in bayside blue. The sound of its engine grew until the car was as solid on the track as the railing was under Dom's fingers, and he watched in stunned silence as it drifted the curves of the track and bolted through the straights. He wasn't sure if he believed it was real yet, but real or not, the driver was good. Really good. Like smooth moves and deft hands and a quick mind. The engine purred, never growled, and Dom admired anyone who kept their car that well maintained.

The Skyline's tires screeched in protest the third time Dom watched it drift through a turn, and then the car bucked and rolled over the cabin once before landing back on its wheels and slamming into the concrete barrier.

Instinct forced energy into Dom's shocked muscles and he shoved himself back to his feet, rushing down the steps and shoving the gate open to get to the track. Years of helping bad drivers out of their own stupidty filled him with the knowledge of how bad the situation could be by the time he reached the car.

The Skyline was smoking and the smell of burning rubber was so strong that it almost choked Dom, except he'd been around the stench his whole life. He imagined fire breaking out, imagined the driver having been choked by his own seatbelt, imagined the damage was worse than it looked and there being a lot of blood. Mostly he tried not to imagine his father.

"Hey!" Dom shouted, shoes skidding on the asphalt as he came up next to the car. "You alright in there?!"

The body of the car was scratched and dented and the hood was bent up, but the chassis seemed intact and there was no immediately noticeable damage to the doors. Still, the smoke kept the driver hard to make out. They coughed though, and waved their hands at the smoke, so at least they were real.

"Hey!" Dom shouted again, annoyed this time at being ignored.

The door popped open and a white sneaker hit the asphalt, found stability, and was joined by a second. Then a hand gripped the window frame and the driver got out. He was young – late twenties or early thirties, like Dom, but paler, and he had a head of blonde curls that begged Dom to smooth them back with his fingers. As he moved away from the wreck, he sort of hopped, and a grin pulled wide on his stupidly handsome face.

"Not exactly what I had planned," he said with a laugh in his voice, and Dom didn't know if the high timbre of his voice was soothing or annoying in that moment.

Dom crossed his arms and frowned deeply. "Can't imagine you meant to crash," he said. The other guy had been driving really well up until that point, and only carelessness could account for the accident. Carelessness had no place on a racetrack, and the goofy attitude of this driver scraped at Dom's skin, trying to get under it. Did he have no respect for the track? For his car? For what almost happened to him?

"Well not yet anyway," the driver said, that same excited laugh just under the surface of his words and Dom bristled. "But I got carried away. Trying to show off, you know?"

"Show off for who?" Dom grunted and looked around at the empty stands. There was no one here to impress. No audience, no fans, no judges, no scouts.

Now the driver snorted. "For you, obviously." He tapped one foot on the ground like he'd stepped on something painful, probably an effect of the crash, and then crossed his arms in imitation of Dom. "And Dude, you should have seen your face. You were impressed."

"Not likely," Dom lied and dropped his arms when he noticed the imitation. "Now who the hell are you? And why are you here? How are you here? I'm dead. This is supposed to be my hell, not yours."

"You're awfully protective of hell," the driver noted. "But this isn't it."

Dom rolled his eyes and started to walk away from the wreck, convinced now that the driver was not harmed physically. How could anyone be hurt here, anyway? They weren't alive. Dom shook his head, angry at himself for letting worldly instincts override what he knew was true. No wonder this idiot was so easy going. What was a crash if you were already dead?

"Oh yeah?" he asked sourly. "Then what is it, Blondie?"

"Kinda like a waiting room, really. Or a train station. The mid-way between two end points." The driver was following him, which Dom had expected and yet still found annoying. A moment ago he'd hated the silence and emptiness, but now he wanted it back.

"Well call the conductor. I'm ready to go to my final resting place or whatever," Dom grunted and walked back through the gate. He shut it behind him, before the driver could follow him through, but when he turned around, the driver was gone. "Wha-?"

"No can do," and the voice was behind him. Flipping around, Dom found the driver sitting in the third row of seats, calm smirk on his face. "For one thing, you have to be dead to pass on."

"How did you-," Dom started to growl but then cut himself off. "What do you mean 'have to be dead'? I am dead!"

The driver stood up, his chair squeaking, and dusted himself off. "Not dead yet," he corrected. "Just dying. There's still a chance for you to live."

"Well I ain't takin' it," Dom said and started to walk away, around the edge of the circuit. He heard the light footsteps of the driver coming down the steps to follow again and he wondered again how the driver had appeared out of nowhere and how he'd gotten into the third row. "Who are you? What are you?" Dom asked, whirling around on his company. Sarcastically, he added, "Some kind of angel of death?" He definitely had the looks to be an angel – blonde, strong but lithe, and gorgeous.

The driver stopped abruptly and held out his hand. "Brian Spilner," he greeted. "But yeah. You can think of me like a… well like a… an angel of destiny."

Now Dom definitely snorted, but he took Brian's hand to shake anyway. For a dead guy, his grip was firm and steady. "Oh yeah? I don't see any wings."

"Maybe you will at some point, but that's not important," Brian said and waved the idea away.

Sure, Dom thought. But the truth was probably worse. Brian had faded into Dom's personal hell. At best he was a wayward spirit, lost on his own way to the afterlife, and Dom did not want to be distracted from accepting his own fate. He didn't need some buster confusing him.

Busters were no good. This guy probably died trying some piss ass stunt to impress a girl, a boy, his brother, someone. He probably died by being stupid, and Dom hadn't. Dom had died from- Well it wasn't from being stupid. He had good reasons. Or maybe they were bad reasons. But he had reasons.

"Hang on a second, Mr. Angel," Dom said, a thought crossing his mind.

"Brian," the man corrected.

"Brian," Dom repeated blandly, causing Brian to frown for the first time, and Dom felt a little guilty about that. "You said 'for one thing', I have to be dead to die, that there was a chance for me to live. But what's the other reasons I can't move on yet?"

"Just one other reason," Brian said, holding up one finger in case Dom couldn't hear apparently. It felt like a teacher scolding him.

"Fine. What's the one other reason?" Death was proving to be just as annoying as life, really, and that was not part of anything Dom had ever heard about the afterlife.

"Me," Brian said and stood up tall, almost as though he'd finally decided Dom would be more impressed by a serious attitude than a goofy one. "For one thing, you have to die to be dead. For another, I'm here, and it's my job to make sure you take that chance and choose to live."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The air lacked humidity and the sun wasn't hot, but there was still something warm about lying on the benches at the bottom of the stands and sunbathing. With an arm over his eyes, Dom could almost imagine he was still alive, just killing a day at the track with nothing of importance to do and no one around to disturb the atmosphere.

Almost- because the row of chairs above him kept creaking, reminding him that he wasn't alone. He had an annoying companion.

"On the bright side, no skin cancer, right?" Brian posed. Dom shifted enough to look up at the other man, who in turn was looking up at the sun. Brian was sprawled over the chairs, body lengthened out, neck stretched, shirt riding up, and Dom was man enough to admit he liked what he saw. "Dark side – no tans."

"I'm dark enough," Dom said with a grunt. "Did you need something?"

"I told you. I'm-"

"Here to make me choose life. Well I got news for you. There ain't no life. I drove into the ocean, Spilner. No oxygen. No oxygen equals no life," Dom said, but Brian did not look deterred.

There were two beats of silence and then Brian leaned forward slightly. "Why?" he asked, and he meant why did Dom kill himself. Dom could tell the question by the look on Brian's face. It was filled with an open and calm expression, and it looked endearing on his features, but Dom had seen similar looks on the faces of too many shrinks.

That look just made Dom shut down, not open up.

"Why's it matter?" he asked and shifted to cover his eyes again.

"Dunno. Does it matter?" Brian asked back, and Dom looked quickly back over. That was never something a shrink asked.

For a long moment, Dom didn't answer and they just stared at each other – brown eyes to blue. But then Dom swung himself to sit up and rested his arms on his knees.

"Alright, Spilner. I got a question for you now," he said. "You say you're some kind of angel. Since when do angels have time to waste on some sorry case like mine? Shouldn't you be focusing on the living?"

"There are older angels doing that. Don't worry about it," Brian said, waving off the idea. The chair on his left creaked and squeaked as Brian removed his leg from it and sat up straighter.

"Older? How old are you?" Dom asked. Angels had ages? He knew about ranks, but was it even possible to have an age when you lived apart from time?

"Twenty-eight," Brian said with a teasing lilt in his tone and smile, as though it were some kind of hidden joke.

"Seriously?" Dom didn't get it. Yeah, Brian looked that age, but no way had he only been around that long.

With a shrug, Brian stood up. There was more creaking involved. Heaven's race track needed some WD-40. "Well time is weird here, but if you include the Earth time after my death…. I guess I'm more like eighty," he said.

That caught Dom's attention. "You died?" he asked.

Too late Brian seemed to realize what he'd said, and his expression betrayed his self-scolding moment before he said, "We're sorta here to talk about you, aren't we? Let's focus on that."

"That how it is?" Dom asked, sour. He tensed his jaw and pressed his hands tight together. "I gotta tell you all my secrets, but you don't gotta tell me anything? Hafta say, you're starting to sound less like an angel and more and more like a shrink." He made sure he and Brian had locked gazes before he narrowed his gaze and said darkly, "And I hate shrinks."

For the first time, Brian looked nervous, and he did his best not to feel bad about that. Brian was trying to get into his head, trying to make him doubt himself and his choices. No matter how pretty his face was, Dom couldn't forgive Brian for that.

"Sorry, Dom," Brian said and put a hand up to stop the confrontation. He sounded sincere enough that Dom stopped glaring at least. "I guess I pressed too hard too quick. I should give you some space."

"Yeah. You should," Dom said, his gravelly voice almost growling.

Brian took a step away and slid his hands into his pockets. For a second he pressed his lips tight together, and then he was frowning outright. "Hey, I'll check in on you later, alright? Maybe we can start over."

"Yeah. Sure," Dom agreed in a voice that spoke volumes on how little he expected that to happen.

The frown on Brian's face tinted with disappointment, but in the next blink he was gone and Dom was left staring up at the empty bleachers. Slowly looking around so that his surprise wouldn't be evident, Dom searched every visible area for the blonde, but he actually gone.

Although he'd been wishing for the other to leave him alone, now that it had happened Dom found himself feeling strangely empty. He remembered the cold, breathlessness that had overcome him when he'd first arrived, and he hoped he could control himself better this time around.

After all, he wasn't alone. He was dead. There was a difference.

The track had been one of Dom's favorite places to spend a few hours when he was growing up. Even with no people in it, he was sure he could find some joy in being stranded here. And really, just how long would he be stranded? Brian called the track a waiting room, but how long did Dom have to wait?

Despite not wanting to go back to his father's office, Dom started up the steps in that direction, heading for the control room. His eyes glanced over where Brian had been, despite himself, and he hesitated in his movement only one row up.

Something red and wet was on the concrete floor. For a moment, Dom thought it looked like blood, but then it faded away as though it had never been there. Just like Brian. Just like the car, which was no longer smoking on the track. Just like everything here.

Shaking off the unsettling feeling the sight gave him, Dom continued walking.

The control room was long and comprised of two levels – one level for the main control board for lighting and sound and automatic door locks and the such, and one level for the announcer's station and a few chairs for corporate viewing. The security cameras also fed into the room, appearing on monitors to the left of the main control board. One chair and a miniature control panel were set up in front of them.

Walking slowly past the monitors, Dom saw what he expected to see. No one. Not a soul could be seen in any area of the track. The food stand downstairs was shuttered, and although Dom usually got hungry when thinking of the great hot dogs they sold, he didn't feel even the slightest tug in his stomach now. Perk of being dead, he supposed. The garage was empty of both people and cars, so that took away the idea of racing to pass time.

His father's office and the hallway outside were still, but even when the track was open for business this wasn't uncommon. The camera on the parking lot was the only interesting screen, really, and that was because it was blank. Not black, per say, but empty. No people, no cars, no objects of any kind, not even the asphalt. It was a pale, empty blue, like a digital TV screen with no incoming signal.

There was no parking lot. The empty feeling in Dom's stomach intensified and he covered the monitor with his hand to block it out. There was nothing outside of the track. He was really and truly stuck.

"Damn," he murmured. "This was not part of the plan."

The window that stretched along the entire far wall drew him to it, and he looked over the track, wishing he had a car. He loved driving. Or he used to. And maybe that was why there were no cars here. Punishment.

Narrowing his eyes, Dom focused on the far side of the track where the garage was set up. Although the camera had said no one was in there, the door was wide open, and Dom could almost make out a car inside.

He moved quickly back to the monitors and found the garage view. His eyes weren't lying. The garage was lit up with outdoor lighting and there was Brian's blue Skyline set up for repairs, wheels two feet off the ground. A moment of watching later and there was Brian, sliding from beneath the body on a creeper seat.

The car didn't really exist. Hell, Brian didn't even really exist. And yet there Brian was, fixing something that shouldn't require any fixing at all. The passenger door had been removed, as well as the roof and hood. Taking a seat, Dom watched Brian meticulously install the new blue hood and test its ability to close.

Angels shouldn't be able to get greasy, and they damn sure as hell shouldn't look so good covered in it.

Grunting in aggravation at himself, Dom pushed away from the monitors and strode quickly from the room. He blocked the sunlight from his eyes as he made his way down the stands and onto the track. It wasn't because he was lonely, he kept telling himself. He just missed the smell of motor oil.

He walked up slow, not wanting to disturb Brian's concentration, and for several moments he was able to observe the work up close without being noticed. Brian's focus was absolute as he went about rebuilding his engine. The car had been lowered to the ground during Dom's trek, but the roof was still missing, as was the passenger door. The grease Dom had noticed through the camera was all the way up to Brian's elbows and a smear of it went across his nose where he'd undoubtedly rubbed an itch.

If Dom knew nothing else about Brian, he at least knew that they shared a knowledge and love of cars. He could tell just by watching Brian work, by the intensity in his eyes as he screwed things in. And maybe that was a little endearing.

He got away with his voyeurism for roughly ten minutes. Then, while tightening a bolt, Brian let out a wrecked gasp and dropped his wrench right through the car and to the ground. It clanged loudly, but it didn't jolt Dom as much as the gasp. At first Dom thought he'd been spotted, but Brian wasn't looking at him. His eyes were closed and he pressed one greasy hand to his chest, pulling at the shirt there. Then he took a slow, deep breath, and glared with annoyance at nothing in particular.

The whole experience lasted less than five seconds, and then Brian was bending down to retrieve his wrench as though nothing had happened. But Dom had stepped forward two paces after hearing the gasp, and with Brian out of his concentration induced blindness, it was enough to have Brian's eyes land on him.

"Dom," he said, surprised, and stood up empty handed.

"Thought this car was gone for good," Dom said and walked the rest of the distance to the car. He bent down and retrieved the wrench, then held it out for Brian to take.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I could just get a new one but… Old habits." He laughed once and bent back over the car to finish what he'd been doing.

He could just get a new one? So could Brian pull into existence whatever he wanted?

"Hey, Spilner," he said, catching the other's attention. "How's this work? You want something and it appears?"

"Uh, sorta." Brian pushed back from the car and wiped his hands on each other, doing nothing to clean them off.

"Can I do that too?" Dom leaned on the car and started to imagine what he might want.

"Ah. There's the catch. Not at all. You're not dead yet, Dom. Remember? Only dead people can control dead space." Brian waved the wrench at Dom and then walked away to grab his new car belt. When he came back, he offered the belt to Dom, but the bigger man shook his head and crossed his arms. Brian frowned, but went about installing it.

Frowning deeply, Dom said, "There's another thing. You keep saying stuff like that. So which are you – an angel or dead?" Brian's fingers twitched on the belt and he dropped part of it momentarily. "Because as far as I was taught, they were two different states of being."

"It's complicated," Brian replied unhelpfully and managed to hook the belt around all the pulleys. He tensioned the belt and then stepped back. "Probably about as complicated as why you aren't helping me with the car."

"Nah, that's not complicated at all," Dom said and pushed off from the blue body. "I don't touch other drivers' cars. Simple as that."

Brian looked unconvinced, stepping up close to Dom as he moved around the other man to the driver's side door. "Sure it has nothing to do with why you drove your Charger off a bridge?" he asked as he popped open the door.

Dom frowned. "I never said I drove a Charger."

"You never said a lot of things." Brian said and slid into the front seat.

He grabbed the keys from the cup holder and slid them into the ignition. When the engine turned over, nothing in the popped hood sparked or grinded or flew off. The belt moved smoothly and anything else Brian had been working on was holding firm. The engine was cut and Brian sighed as he dropped the keys back into the cup holder.

"Dom," he said without getting out. "I know you don't want to… but you have to talk to me."

"I don't have to do shit," Dom grunted, stepping away from the car.

He got five steps away before Brian quickly got out of the car and stopped him with the urgency of his movements. "Dom!" he shouted and Dom couldn't help but turn back. "I'm not kidding. You gotta face what happened to you, man. You gotta talk about your dad and your mom and Mia-"

At the mention of his sister, Dom's chest caved and his stomach burned. He rushed Brian and pinned him to the back door of the Skyline, ignoring the grunt of pain the other let escape his lips. His own breath was heavy and hot as he leaned in close, staring into the angel's bright blue eyes as though his glare could dim them.

"You don't talk about my family," he growled. "You don't talk about 'em, cause you don't know anything about 'em. You hear me? You don't know anything!"

"It wasn't your fault," Brian said, his gaze fixed and determined, his voice undeterred by Dom's shouting. His hands were up in a show of surrender, but his words didn't back down, and each one hit Dom like a hammer to a bruise. "What happened to Mia… It was an accident."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Dom snarled and shoved against Brian before releasing him and heading out of the garage.

Behind him, Brian didn't let up. "I know!" he shouted, but Dom kept walking. "I know, cause she told me, Dom! She was here and she told me everything!"

His footsteps stalled and he whirled on his heel to glare back at Brian. The blonde was standing by the tail of the Skyline, hands out wide, daring Dom to challenge him. But Dom couldn't form words. Mia had met Brian? She had been here, in this place? Had she been offered the chance to live as well but chose not to?

Dropping his hands slightly, Brian continued. "Mia knew you were gonna blame yourself, but there was nothin' she or I could do about it. She knew that, but she still told me, and then she was able to move on, Dom. She just wants you to forgive yourself and be happy. Believe me."

It felt like something was clogging Dom's throat. Cottony and hard at the same time. He couldn't remember the last time he'd believed someone at all, much less with enough faith to buy the story Brian was selling. But was it possible? He'd lost his sister so suddenly, and he could definitely imagine her warming up to Brian's easy smile. Perhaps Brian was telling the truth and Mia really had passed through this crossroads on the way to the afterlife.

"Just talk to me, Dom," Brian said, voice softer, almost begging, and he dropped his hands to his sides.

Dom shut his eyes against Brian's sad expression. What good would talking do? It hadn't helped in life, so he couldn't imagine it would help in death. With a deep breath, he reined in the emotion Brian had forced to the surface with Mia.

He couldn't open those memories. The heartache could kill him all over again. Damn it, he just wanted to die in peace. He just wanted to forget all of it. That's why he'd driven off the bridge to begin with. He didn't die just to relive all the pain. What good would talking do?

"No," he murmured.

When he opened his eyes, Brian was gone again.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Skyline had not vanished with Brian this time. It sat in the garage, hood propped up, interior exposed. It looked a lot like how Dom felt.

"Talk," he grunted as he stood by the car, taking in the signs of damage. "Stupid."

With a firm but gentle hand, Dom brushed over the skid marks in the paint job. He hadn't fixed up a car in years – at least not with any sort of vigor. After Mia-

Dom shook his head and picked up the wrench where Brian had left it. If the angel was going to leave, he should at least clean up after himself. Dom put the wrench away, and then he rolled the creeper seat back in place against the wall. He knew the garage like a second home, knew where every screw belonged. As he got a grip on the new passenger door, which was sitting to the side and waiting to be used, Dom hesitated.

He glanced back at the Skyline and then to the door in his hands. Logically, the best way to get the extra door out of the way was to put it in place on the car, but Dom had sworn off fixing cars two years ago. So also logically, he wouldn't be the one to fix the door.

And yet ten minutes later, he was tightening the bolts on the door to attach it to the car. Wood sat under the door to lift it high enough and more wood was screwed into that wood to keep the door from falling backward, and really it wasn't the first time Dom had attached a door all by himself. Attaching the door was the easy part. Connecting the wires was the tedious bit.

It was a predictable rhythm he found himself in, stripping wires and connecting them to others and then covering the exposed wires over again. It required concentration and precision. For Dom, it was habitual. He'd rebuilt enough cars in his life that he could probably play twenty questions with Brian and order a pizza all while he attached the wires, with no added difficulty.

The repetition was soothing, and he lost himself in the familiarity. As he worked, he could almost hear the radio his sister used to keep in the garage, quietly belting out the classic rock station. He could almost imagine her swaying to the music while she worked on the paint job for the car. As he attached another wire, he could picture the way she'd smile teasingly at him if he just turned his gaze to look at her.

His eyes raised up and found someone leaning in the back corner of the garage by the silent radio. But it wasn't Mia. Even after being spotted, Brian said nothing. He leaned there, arms loosely crossed, hair as wild as ever, and just watched Dom work, calm appreciation in his eyes.

Strangely, as Dom returned his focus to the last of the wires, he found the silent company comfortable.

Last wire attached, Dom stood and carefully shut the door. Brian moved then. He walked to the car and slid into the driver's seat. As soon as the keys were in and the engine running, Dom reached around the door to check the power windows. Working. Brian hit the power locks. On. Off. Working.

The engine cut off and Brian took the keys out, dropping them back into the cup holder. For a small moment, they were both silent, both thinking. Then Brian sighed and ran a hand through his thick curls. Dom had a half-second of wondering what it would feel like to run his fingers through Brian's hair, but then his own brain stopped itself and Brian started speaking.

His voice was quiet, but in the silence of the track, he was audible. "My old lady… Sorry. My mother. She never had a good choice in men. I grew up during the Second World War. Times were tough. Times were terrifying. My dad… well she told me he died in the war. But I knew he just left her when she got pregnant."

He paused then and ran his hand around the steering wheel, feeling the leather there. For his part, Dom didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he even could say. The forties were a long time ago. Condolences were meaningless. Telling Brian not to talk about it was downright rude.

"She had a bunch of shucks through the years, but two stand out in my memory. Joey… Joey had a fondness for moonshine – said it was because prohibition was still in effect when he was born. He didn't mean to, but he taught me to fight. Never laid a hand on me or my mom, but I knew it would only be a matter of time, so I learned," Brian continued.

"And did he ever hit you?" Dom asked, irrationally thinking of finding the man and beating him right back if he had.

A small smile danced on Brian's lips. "Nope. After all my training, he got on the wrong side of a hit and run. Died instantly."

"And the second guy?" Dom prompted, curiosity getting the better of him.

Without answering, Brian bent over the wheel, leaning his forehead on the leather. He breathed slow and deep, and Dom couldn't see his expression to read it. When Brian pushed back to sit up, he didn't look to be in a sharing mood. Instead he looked bored and quizzical.

"Tell me about Mia," he said. His tone was soft and conversational, but also sweet, almost as though he were asking about a newborn kitten and not Dom's deceased sister.

"What's there to tell?" Dom asked, grunting, and thumped his knuckles on the door as he turned away. "You met her. You know."

"Dom." Brian pulled himself from the car, the movement slow and cumbersome, as though it was painful to leave the car.

Groaning, Dom cut off all communication. He smacked the hood of the car and let out a heavy, deep breath. "If I tell you, do I get to leave here?" he asked roughly. "You said Mia told you everything and she's gone. So is that the trick? I open up and then I get to die in peace?"

Brian frowned deeply, leaning on the driver's side door, but after a tense moment, he nodded. "If that's what you want," he said. "Talk to me and, one way or the other, you'll get what you want."

Silence returned while Dom tried to fight himself, to convince himself to give in and just talk, and in that silence Dom decided he'd be happy if he never had to deal with such an absence of sound again in his life… or his death.

Glancing over Brian, in the faux lights of the garage, Dom was struck dumb a moment longer. The sun, or whatever was outside, reached into the garage just far enough to hit the other man's right side. The way it made his skin glow admirably was to be expected, but for that shocked moment of muteness and awe, Dom thought he actually saw the wings Brian claimed to have. A blink later and they were gone, leaving Brian standing on the threshold of human and natural lighting, but just as human as Dom was.

Curiosity urged Dom to walk around the car and check the air behind Brian for where the wings went. Strength of Will kept him where he was, and he cleared his throat to get himself back on topic.

"Mia was six years younger than me. She was my rock, my… my sanity. No matter what else happened in our lives, we had each other, and I had her. We were the only family we had left. She was more than that though. She was… everything," Dom said and his chest grew tight as he remembered her.

The kitchen loud with sound as she blared her music and cooked and sang. The park virtually empty except for her, lying on the grass and talking about how, one day, she'd come there with her husband, and maybe they'd even have a kid.

"She was gonna be a doctor," Dom continued. "Wanted to save people. She had been accepted into college, had three scholarships lined up to pay for it, and we went out to celebrate. And then-" He pressed his lips hard together, remembered the screech of tires, the shout that only made it halfway out of his sister's throat. "I couldn't get the car to start. I couldn't drive fast enough. I couldn't save her."

"Your car was totaled, Dom," Brian said. "T-boned into a ditch. It was a miracle that you-"

"I shoulda died that day!" Dom shouted suddenly and almost punched the car door. Instead he slammed his hand onto the frame of the roof and curled his fingers in around it. "I shoulda died right beside her, but somebody, some kind of God damn guardian angel protected me."

He glared up at Brian then, anger at himself and the universe rushing back through him as he remembered the pain he felt that night. He remembered the doctors telling him how lucky he'd been, how he had an angel watching over him. And he knew Brian wasn't that angel, because Brian knew Mia, and no guardian angel would let Mia die if there was any way to save her. But Brian called himself a guardian angel, and in that moment such a title made Dom's blood boil.

"I convinced her to go out. I was driving. I was the one not watching the intersection. And then Mia was gone. Just like that. And how is that fair, Brian? How was I supposed to move on from that?!" Dom couldn't help but shout. He hated himself, hated the driver, hated everyone as soon as he woke up in the hospital and they told him Mia hadn't made it through.

Closing his eyes, he could see her, pinned in her seat, hanging above him as the car sat sideways in a ditch. He had been barely conscious, but he remembered calling her name before he finally passed out, and he remembered she was bleeding too much to survive. She'd probably already been dead, but he hadn't checked. He had heard the ambulance sirens and relaxed into the door of the Charger and let himself lose consciousness.

"You don't ever forget," Brian murmured, drawing Dom back to the present. "It'll never stop hurting, Dom. Not even if you die." He swallowed thickly and gripped the framework across from Dom. "But you don't obsess over it. Sometimes things happen for a reason, and there's nothing you, or I, can do about it. And I know you don't want to hear it and it's easier said than done but… Dom, eventually you do move on. You do whatever you can to not think about it, and one day you wake up and you realize it's not killing you anymore. You have a life and it can still be good."

"How would you know, Brian?" Dom asked, cold disbelief in his voice. Dom's life had only gotten more and more dim after Mia's death, and he saw no way it would ever get better. "You're dead, just like me."

A small shrug lifted Brian's shoulders and then the blonde smiled ruefully. "I can't see a lot of what's happening on Earth, but once in awhile, they let me know things, let me see things. And I peeked in on my mom a couple of times, you know? And I watched her get better. Dom. Do you get that? She lost me, but she got better. She used me to get herself on track. Death doesn't mean everything gets worse. You _can_ get stronger from it."

"Like you said," Dom grunted out. "Easier said than done."

Brian laughed slightly and nodded, a slightly teasing grin on his face. "Yeah. Like I said." The angel shrugged then and walked around the car to stand two feet to Dom's right. His smile promised nothing but fun as he said, "You know what, Dom? I think I know what you'd conjure if you could."

"Oh yeah?" Dom asked, doubting how well Brian knew him despite the other's claim to knowing all about him.

"Yeah." Brian held his closed fist out to Dom and raised his eyebrows, telling Dom to hold out his hand without words.

Forehead knit, Dom did as asked and put his hand palm up under Brian's fist. The smile on Brian's face only grew at that, and Dom's stomach knotted in response, though he didn't show it on his face. Brian opened his fist while Dom's focus was still on his face, and something cold and metallic fell into Dom's waiting palm.

Glancing down quickly, Dom found himself holding a key. But not just any car key. It was the Charger's car key. Dead or alive, he'd recognize it. It had been his father's, and then his after the death of his parents. It had hung by the front door for years, lived in his wallet when they were living in the car. In many ways, that key was the heirloom, the legacy of his family. And there it was, in his hand again, even after he'd driven it into the ocean.

"Brian-," Dom began, but Brian shifted and backed up toward the entrance to the garage.

"You don't have to drive it," Brian assured, and behind him, sitting on the track, was Dom's black beauty.

As Dom moved forward, Brian stepped out of the way, and then Dom couldn't see Brian, because he only had eyes for the car. There wasn't a scratch on it. Not from the railing he'd smashed through. Not from the water or the bottom of the bay. It looked fresh from the garage, all new tires and doors and windows. He'd remade the car almost from scratch after the accident, and it looked exactly like this.

Running his hand along the shining surface, Dom felt his lungs contract. He sucked in a hard breath and squeezed his eyes shut, head bent down over the hood. The car was a ghost to him, a figure in place of all the people he cared about, and he wished he could be angry at Brian for brining it here.

But the truth was that he loved this car. Loved it like family. Loved it like home. And even if he didn't regret dying, he definitely regretted taking the Charger with him. After taking a deep breath, he made a long shushing noise as he caressed the car. It was good to see the car in such fine condition, and he smiled into the sleek black surface.

Cold.

Suddenly, for no discernible reason, he was cold. Not February-in-New-York cold. He was November-in-North-Carolina-and-jumped-into-the-pool cold. He felt wet, though his clothes were dry, and in the semi-non-existent sun, he shivered.

"Bri-," he turned to ask the angel for the cause, but Brian was gone again. Just inside the garage, Dom once again saw the dark red paint-like puddle, the same as what he'd seen on the bleachers, and he wondered if it was a lingering sign of Brian.

The cold chilled Dom so badly in his legs that he almost couldn't stand up in the wake of it. His eyes searched around for Brian, hoping the other had merely flickered to another part of the stands, but he saw nothing. Fear gripped him as his legs wobbled and he fell to his knees.

"Brian," he gasped and sucked in oxygen.

His lungs didn't want to breathe. Gasp after gasp, he still felt like he was suffocating. Raising his hand to tug at his shirt collar, he could only spare a modicum of thought to his desperately shaking fingers as he tried to relieve his airway, but there was nothing wrong with his throat.

Why couldn't he breathe? Why was he so cold? Was this death? Was he finally dying?

Muffled, as though from under the stands, Dom heard a sharp sound, like a tiny explosion. His next gasp was in shock, not in desperation for oxygen, and the air returned to his lungs. The cold retreated immediately, as though it had never been there at all, and Dom was left panting softly on the asphalt, his eyes scanning the stands in the direction of the sound.

Under the stands was the food station and a few offices, but in this world there was only him and Brian. So why did he think he'd just heard a gunshot?


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Keys were not a good weapon. You had to get too close to use them and you needed quite a bit of force behind them to make them useful at all. Dom kept his car keys in his pocket. In his hands he had a wrench from the garage. It looked spotless and new, but Dom would not be afraid to dirty it if he actually found someone walking around shooting people.

The food court was shut down. All the lights and machines were off. Listening hard, Dom heard nothing, not even his own footsteps. If someone else was down here, they were doing a very good job of hiding.

Around the bend from the food court was a set of offices and a meeting room. Dom tried the handles to the offices but found the doors locked. The meeting room had a large window in its wall and was used for birthdays as well as corporate meetings. As he got closer, Dom noticed blood on the window, and his chest constricted. This wasn't from his memory. No one had ever been murdered at the track.

When he reached the door, he could just make out the top of a familiar head of blonde curls leaning against the wall below the window. Below the blood.

"Brian?" Dom asked, pushing through the door. In hindsight, he should have been worried about the shooter being in the area, but in the moment, he could only focus on the bloodied window and Brian's wellbeing.

"Dom," Brian croaked painfully. "No-"

And by the time Dom stepped fully into the room, Brian's voice was gone. More than that, the body was gone. There was no one leaning against the bloodied wall.

But Dom had heard Brian's voice. Dom had seen Brian's hair. And the room certainly looked like a crime scene. The window had blood splatter, and the baseboard was thickly coated with evidence of a mortally bleeding wound. Whoever got shot would need immediate and effective medical care if there was any hope of survival.

Yet Brian wasn't there.

"Brian?" Dom called loudly and leaned back out of the room to check the hallway. No one. No blood. No footsteps. No return shout. Dom was alone.

Wrench in hand, Dom tore himself away from the horrific puddle of blood and quickly continued his search down the hall. Brian was fine. Right? He said he was already dead, and dead people couldn't die. Right?

But the pain in Brian's voice when he called Dom's name was real. And the fear in his 'No' was real too. Dead or not, Dom was certain of those things, and that meant Brian needed his help. Dom just had to find him first.

He searched every bathroom, every closet, every awkwardly shaped nook. He even broke into the offices to check there. Brian wasn't in the main hall. Backtracking, Dom made sure Brian hadn't reappeared in the garage, fixing his car like nothing had happened. But the garage was silent, and the only occupant was the half fixed Skyline.

The stands. Dom jogged to the top of the seats and slowly walked around the entire track, searching all the rows below him for any sign of another person. There wasn't even a hat or a dribble of blood. The longer Dom searched, the more certain he became that the red liquid left behind in Brian's wake was blood. Why a dead angel would leave behind blood was still unclear, but it worried Dom and filled him with a stupid guilt.

The guilt pulled at him and said he should have noticed the blood the first time and asked Brian about it, that he should have known something was wrong. But the logical part of his brain scolded the guilt. Dom didn't understand how the afterlife worked, and Brian never acted like anything was wrong… at least not with him. All Dom could do now was look for his injured friend.

Friend? Dom frowned as he continued to search the stands. He and Brian had barely met, and Dom didn't have any friends… Not anymore.

Stopping by the broadcast tower after making a complete circle around the track, Dom knelt down and strained his brain to think of anywhere else Brian could be. Instead his brain remembered the days before everything went wrong. Back when there had been cookouts on Sunday and racing on Saturday, back when there was no end to the smiles and the laughter, back when meeting Brian Monday morning was all Dom would have needed to invite him to family dinner on Tuesday.

Dom used to have friends. Dom used to be easy to get along with, easy to befriend and easy to stay friends with. He expected only trust and loyalty and gave it back in spades. He didn't need birthday gifts. He didn't need all your time. He didn't need you to be a racer or show up to every party. He just needed to know you were with him if things were rough.

And then things went rough. And it wasn't that all his friends didn't show up. It was that they couldn't.

Shaking his head, Dom headed down the bleachers to find the entrance to the underside. Most of the bleachers were above the main hall and the food court and the garage, but there was a section that was mostly hollow underneath, used mainly for storage.

Ripping the door open, Dom held his wrench high and entered the darkened space. He flipped the light switch and hesitated. In life, this area had been full of random junk. Extra chairs, old parts for the restaurant, bits of cars that might be useful in fixing one of the dragsters, filing cabinets, storage units, replacement lights for the starting signal – the list of items held down there was endless. But the room Dom stepped into was almost barren in comparison.

A couple of boxes were stacked in one corner, but the center of the space was taken up by a long dining table and chairs. There was a grill in the far corner and grass on the floor, and Dom had to take several moments just to breath. It was his old backyard, taken and shoved under the stands. Even the light that had come on when he hit the switch resembled Sunday afternoon sunlight, not a florescent bulb.

"Brian!" Dom shouted when he found his chest hadn't caved in from the surprising sight. He looked back out the door, onto the track, but there was no car speeding in a circle in an attempt to impress Dom. "Brian!" and now the shout was angry, fueled by anxiety and fear.

"Here," Brian said. It was quiet and unlike the conversational calm Brian usually used, but it was still Brian. He was sitting at the dining table, slouching back and not facing Dom, arms crossed around his chest.

Lowering his wrench to his side, Dom felt his insides relax at the sight of the other man. Brian wasn't covered in blood, and that was a blessing to start with. "Brian," Dom said, this time with relief, as he walked over to the table. "What the hell is going on?"

"Nothin," Brian said with a shrug, but when Dom finally got a good look at the blonde, he looked tired. "I see you found something new. Or something old. I guess it depends on how you look at it."

"Bri-," Dom began but found his words covered by Brian's sharp response.

"Dom." And his tone was final. Brian wasn't going to talk about it. Dom could tell, because he knew if their places were switched, he wouldn't tell either.

Grunting, Dom set his wrench down on the table and took a seat across from Brian. He wanted answers, but he was starting to see how this game worked. If he wanted Brian to talk, he had to talk. If he wanted to leave this place, he had to talk. If he wanted anything, he had to talk… even if he didn't want to.

"So what?" Dom asked, crossing his arms like Brian. "You wanted a barbecue?"

"I didn't populate this place," Brian said, frowning. "The layout of the racetrack is all you. You create the place. I just show up in it."

"So I wanted a barbecue?" Dom corrected, his tone sour. He knew how the game went now, but that didn't mean he liked it.

Brian, for his part, did not look offended by the tone. In fact, he looked amused. His tired expression lessened as he smiled, and then there were plates on the table in front of them. Each plate was home to a large, perfectly grilled, chicken drumstick that was lathered in barbecue sauce.

"Were barbecues a big thing for you growing up?" Brian asked. He uncrossed his arms and picked up his chicken. Dom eyed the food warily, but Brian tore into it, instantly smearing the sauce all around his mouth.

"Yeah," Dom said with another grunt. "Every Sunday, my father hosted a cookout for the whole neighborhood. Everyone brought food to share. Kept the neighborhood close."

Napkins were on the table now, and Brian wiped his mouth with one before he asked, "So what happened that you lost all those people? When you lost the house, where were the neighbors?"

Dom sat up straighter and set his arms on the table on either side of his food. "Some had moved on. Some died with my father. Most couldn't do much because of the recession. But I suspect some were just less loyal than they proclaimed to be."

Wiping his hands clean, Brian shrugged but didn't say anything. He wrinkled his nose before nodding his head in a way that suggested another shrug. If he made one more thinking motion, Dom was gonna throw his chicken at him, but then Brian leaned back in his chair and focused entirely on Dom again.

"You ever think Letty misses you?" he asked, curious and conversational and not like he was prying. It was interesting the way Brian could talk like he'd known you for years and you almost believed you had.

"Haven't really thought about it this past year," Dom admitted gruffly, but now he did.

He remembered Letty from when the two of them were both in middle school and she used to beat him at bike racing, and then they both got motorcycles in high school but then sold them after Letty crashed and nearly lost her arm. Cars were Dom's entire focus after that – his every hobby and passion. He was gonna race like his father, and Letty was gonna be his top mechanic… when she wasn't beating him in the off season.

Letty. Over everyone he'd ever met in his life, she was his best friend. When the government took their house, Letty was the one shoving a cop off the front porch and getting handcuffs slapped on her while Dom and Mia were escorted off the property. When their parents died, she was the one planning the funeral because the siblings just couldn't do it. Even though she'd lost her father in the same incident, she was stronger than both of them.

For the first time since Mia's death, Dom wondered what happened to Letty. She'd been held overnight in jail for the cop thing, but they hadn't spoken since. Dom had been too busy trying to find work and support Mia and maybe buy the house back.

Maybe he should have called her when he'd had the chance.

"You know, she's probably worried sick about you," Brian said with half a shrug. "Probably gonna kick your ass when she finds you again."

"Probably would kick yours too if you pulled this shit with her," Dom replied, and at least Brian had the decency to look embarrassed.

There was a moment of silence while Brian took another bite of his chicken and Dom literally swallowed the urge to do the same to his own. When Brian was finished swallowing and wiping his mouth again, they looked straight at each other, and for a long minute they just stared. Something that no longer mattered stirred in Dom's chest, and he pretended not to notice it. In its wake, Dom was left with the image of a blood soaked wall in the meeting room, and that just made his gut twist uncomfortably.

Seeming to sense Dom's thoughts, Brian smiled, tight lipped but not unkind. "Don't worry about it, Dom," he said. "I'm alright."

"Never said you weren't," Dom said gruffly.

"No," Brian agreed and nodded at the plate in front of Dom. "But you were thinking it. Now eat up. It's Sunday, right? Nothing bad happens on Sunday."

With a grunt, Dom finally reached for his food. Nothing indeed, he thought. Nothing except for the day the cops came to take the house aw-

Spitting, Dom dropped the chicken leg and it bounced and fell to the floor. He had barely touched his teeth to it, but already his mouth was filled with its awful flavor. He might as well have bitten into old cardboard!

Across from him, Brian burst into full, barking laughter. The look Dom made in his disgusted shock must have been good, because Brian was actually doubled over with the force of his amusement. For his part, Dom wanted to be angry at the obvious trick that had been played on him and the teasing laughter, but… But Brian was so bright when he laughed and smiled openly like that, and Dom found himself satisfied with sitting back, frown on his face, and letting the giggles die in their own time.

Brian kept saying he was dead, but in the moment he'd never looked more alive. All of his 'guardian angel' bullshit, his wise words, and his pro-life sentiments had fallen off in that moment and he was just Brian. Just a guy who'd tricked a friend into eating garbage by pretending it was cake. It was so utterly human and normal.

And as Dom watched the angel glow with glee, he actually had to agree. Nothing too bad ever happened on Sunday.

Nausea gripped his gut in the next moment, and the frozen feeling from before soaked back into his bones. Dom grimaced in the wake of it and tried to push away from the table, to escape the sudden icy draft, but he found his hands were shaking too badly to move properly and he ended up catching his feet on the legs of his chair, not far enough back, and tripping away from the table instead of walking.

"Dom?!" Brian exclaimed, worry and fear throughout his voice.

The bald man fell against the wall of the stadium and shook his head. His lungs contracted painfully, and he couldn't find his breath. His air came in wheezes and every desperate gasp hurt. Hands grabbed at his white shirt, tugging him to turn away from the wall, and then the hands were pressing against Dom's chest, his throat, his face, and finally his arms.

"No," Brian said like a curse. "No, damn it! Come on, Dom, you're not finished yet. Talk to me, Dom. Dom, breathe!"

Brian's hand shoved harshly against Dom's sternum and he felt the oddest sensation pass through his chest, like he'd just taken the first drop in a rollercoaster… but in his chest and not his stomach. The force of whatever Brian had done pushed the life back into Dom's lungs and he gasped loudly as the oxygen rushed back through him.

They were on the floor now, but Dom didn't remember collapsing. Brian's hand was still on his chest, his other gripping tight to Dom's shoulder, and now that Dom wasn't shaking, he noticed that Brian was. The blonde panted beside him but held Dom's gaze.

"You're not dead yet," Brian insisted, lowering his hand from Dom's shoulder.

Then his face screwed up in discomfort and his head dropped as he gasped in pain. Dom's eyes searched for the cause of Brian's pain and then he saw it. Blood was on the floor below Brian. Blood was coated down Brian's jeans and oozed from between the fingers on the hand Brian now pressed to his own diaphragm.

"Brian?" Dom asked, fear freezing his stomach all over again.

"It's okay," Brian said, but his voice was weak and shaking. "I'll be okay."

"Like hell you will be," Dom shot back and pressed his own hand to Brian's torso, over the wound. "I thought you said you were already dead. Why are you bleeding everywhere?"

"I needed more time… I can't let you die," Brian replied, as though that explained anything. He sagged against Dom, head leaning on Dom's chest and his own hand. Dom cursed and searched with his eyes for something that could possibly block the wound. "It's okay," Brian murmured again and he sounded far away even though he was right there with Dom. "Everything's gonna be alright, Ma. I'm gonna make… everything… alright. I promise."

Then, in Dom's tense arms, Brian became transparent. "Brian!" Dom shouted. And then it was just Dom on the floor, hands and knees bloodied… and utterly alone.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dom didn't move from the floor until the blood from Brian had done like the angel and vanished. Even though his hands were clean then, he still felt like the sticky red substance was coating him and he rubbed his hands together to try and rid himself of the sensation.

What had Brian done? What the hell had he done?!

Standing, Dom rushed from the room, eager to leave it behind. He didn't go searching for Brian this time. Something told him he wouldn't find anyone, not even if he called out a million times. Out in the middle of the track, Dom found the nicest looking spot in the grass and dropped down on it. All he could do was wait.

Something was happening to Dom, something cold and painful, and Brian had saved him back there… but at what cost? What if Brian never came back? He'd lost a lot of blood. He'd lost a lot in the meeting room too and he'd come back from that. But maybe he'd lost too much this time.

'You're not dead yet.'

Brian had said it so forcefully, like he needed Dom to believe it as much as he evidently did. And what was all the shit about not being able to let Dom die? Even if Dom was still alive, which he wasn't, what did it matter to Brian if Dom survived? Brian was dead. He'd been dead for decades. Well hadn't he?

The gunshot wound. Dom frowned harshly up at the bright sky and its lack of a discernible sun. That was how Brian had died, wasn't it? Brian was reliving his death in that meeting room. But why? And what had he done to Dom to open up that wound again?

"Ma," Dom said, testing the word. Clearly, Dominic Toretto was not Brian Spilner's mother, but still Brian had said it. At some point, he must have slipped into his memories too far and forgotten where he was.

Brian was killed with multiple gunshots to the chest. There was no way that amount of blood came out of just one hole. The thought made Dom sick to his stomach. He wanted to find the bastard who shot Brian and shoot them in the chest to see how they liked it… except Brian died in the fifties. What good would it do?

Of course, he'd need Brian to confirm the details. Dom didn't understand this world or its rules. And he needed to know a few things before he could go about plotting revenge for anything. For one thing, if Brian died in the fifties, why was he still dying now? Was it an effect of death? You have to keep reliving the way you died over and over again?

That didn't sound like a good idea at all.

Dom looked over at the stands, at their father's office up high, at the garage. He remembered how much they all loved this place before the incident. Mia loved it. Dom loved it. Their parents, Letty, Letty's parents, everyone loved this track. And Mia had been here after she died, just like Dom.

'She just wants you to forgive yourself and be happy.'

Brian met Mia… or he was just really good at guessing her personality. Because even without Brian telling him that, Dom knew it was true. He'd known it since the day of the accident, but he couldn't just pass the blame onto someone else. He couldn't just let go. Not then. But here, in their father's track, hearing someone confirm what he already knew… Dom thought maybe he could believe it now.

"Mia," Dom said, sitting up and setting his hands in his lap. "I'm closer to you now. Closer than I've been in a year. If there's any way you can hear me, I just wanted to let you know that I love you. I know… if you could hear me at all this year, you know that, and you know how sorry I am and you've heard me cry. But I'm not here to cry today, Mia." He pressed his lips together. "And I thought I was here to join you, but I can't do that yet. I gotta stay here for a bit, okay? Cause Brian needs some help, and I'm all he's got. So I'm sorry, but you have to wait a bit longer."

A warm breeze blew across the stadium, and only once it had passed did Dom recognize it as the first movement of air in his entire stay. He smiled at the sky, taking the sign for what it was, and pushed himself to his feet.

Mia would forgive him for delaying their reunion.

Dom wasn't sure how much time had passed with him lying in the grass, but the sky never darkened so time itself seemed superfluous here. Enough time, he thought, had passed for Brian to regain his strength… at least if it was anything like the first time. So now it was time to search for him again.

"Brian?" he called out, hands over his mouth, and he turned toward the garage. The Charger still sat out front, the Skyline inside. Neither car belonged on a track… not a real one anyway.

No dice. Brian wasn't in there as far as Dom could tell. A tingle on his back, that felt a little bit like remnant wind but didn't act like wind should or could, made him turn around and face the stands near his father's office.

From his distance, anyone would have been a random face in the crowd at best. Luckily for Dom, there was no crowd, which meant the only person who could possibly be sitting in the top row was Brian. Calmly, casually, Dom made his way to the stands and up each row until he came to the end of the top one. Brian didn't look at him. His eyes were out on the track, as though he were watching horses graze on the patch of grass there.

First, Dom let himself take in Brian's well kept state. He wasn't bleeding anymore and his clothes were clean. He looked rested and calm, no hint of the desperate ache on his face from before. But Brian was quiet, and Dom suspected that was because of him. Brian was waiting for Dom to bring it up, to demand answers. He was letting Dom determine the direction of conversation, and that made Dom want to not betray that kind of trust.

"So," he started, closing the last of the distance between them. Still Brian said nothing, and Dom sat down beside him. "You died in the fifties, right?"

"I did," Brian agreed, the first sign of confusion showing in his forehead.

"Then how do you own a Skyline?" Dom asked. He motioned toward the garage. "Those weren't in the states in the fifties."

Laughing slightly, Brian shook his head. "No. I drove an old Aston Martin model. I built it mostly from scratch after I lifted the totalled frame and body from a junk yard. Wasn't the prettiest car in New England, but it ran well. Ran fast too, if I needed it to."

Leaning back in his chair, Dom shrugged. "So how'd you get the Skyline?"

"I'm dead, Dom. I'm not limited by time. It's hard to explain, but I've seen pieces of the world since my death, and I've toyed with cars throughout the years. I had a Supra back in the eighties. Kept that thing as my go-to car to conjure for years until I finally saw the Skyline." Now Brian was smiling, something relaxed and happy, and Dom almost smiled too. He understood this interest in cars and the sort of reverie that could come with a favorite model.

"Another thing," Dom said, not letting himself concentrate on the peace on Brian's face. "You don't sound like you're from the fifties either."

With a tiny snort, Brian asked, "Do you want me to go back to using that lingo?"

"Just saying you don't sound like your own supposed origin story. How do I know you really lived and died in the fifties and that you're not just some buster who happens to be currently dying right now, in the twenty-first century?"

The peace left Brian's face as easily as it had come, and then he was frowning hard. For a moment, he wrestled with his thoughts, his eyes lingering over the announcement box and stands, and Dom wondered if he'd somehow hit a nerve.

Finally, Brian took a deep breath. "I told you I remember two of my mom's lovers most, right?"

"Right. Joey the alcoholic, who taught you to fight." Dom sat up then, eager to hear the continuation of this story. Brian turned to face him as much as he could in the seat.

"Right. So the other shuck was Rocky. Rocky was sort of low level mafia, alright? Not the don by any means, but he had a small bit of turf to himself. Ma liked him because he had connections. He could 'protect us' or somethin. Now see, Rocky and my ma, they use to play back seat bingo, see? One day I come upon them, right? And my ma, she doesn't seem like it was particularly razzin' her berries, you see what I'm sayin?" Brian paused there for a heartbeat, eyes slightly teasing, but then his whole face grew serious. "So at first I thought, man I should cut out, but the more I saw the more I got frosted. So I ripped the shuck from the car and told him to get bent. Threw a couple fists and then he challenged me to see who could burn rubber hotter. See cause he was a greaser and he knew I was flitty, so he thought he had an easy win."

"Riiight," Dom said, eyebrows knit as he tried to keep the story straight in his head. Maybe it was a bad idea to call out the lingo issue. So Brian hated Rocky and they got into a fight and then Rocky challenged Brian to a race. But what was flitty?

A playful smile flickered across Brian's features for a brief moment. "See, Big Daddy had a hopped up bent eight in his corner and I just had this old flip top. But what he didn't know though was I'd souped up my rocket. So when it was time to haul, I creamed him. He ended up jacked up and I won. Well he got on the horn and called the heat, which was most un-hip, so I split fast. Come to find Ma all done up pretty in the hospital. Recognized his handiwork real fast. Apparently he blamed her for my fists and my machine. Well that burned me up so bad. As soon as Ma was able to leave the hospital, I drove to see Rocky. Told Ma to stay in the car."

Some of the color had drained from Brian's face by then and Dom hoped it was just his imagination. He put a hand on Brian's shoulder to steady the way the other was starting to shake. Brian seemed to appreciate it, putting a hand over Dom's. That's what told Dom the memories Brian was recalling were the cause of his shaking and not some resurgence of blood loss. Dom could understand – he'd never seen his parents in the hospital, but if his mother had gotten beaten up because of him, he'd probably be shaking just thinking about it too.

"I was real gone at this point. Got right up in his face to rattle his cage. But I made a goof. Didn't know he was packin' Roscoe. Didn't think about it. Just told him to lay off my Ma, like forever. Well Rocky, he didn't like being told what to do, see? So he pulled old Roscoe out and decided I'd meddled enough. He let off some Chicago lightning, pardon the rusty lingo. Then he skipped the scene and left me to bleed. Ma found me ten minutes later, but it was too late." Another deep breath. And another. "Enough lingo for you?" he asked.

"Maybe a bit much," Dom admitted. Shot to death by the mob… or the one small part of it Brian had an encounter with. Rocky sounded like a loose cannon with control issues.

Brian smiled then, something like relief in the middle but anxiety on the edges. He bowed his head a moment and then returned to stare into Dom's eyes.

"My mom's boyfriend shot me four times," he said. "And I had only two regrets. One, that I didn't take the bastard down with me. And two, that my mom saw me die. I told you she got better… but only after she got numb. I couldn't do anything for her, but I woke up in a place like this. I mean, it wasn't a race track, but it was something of mine. And I was filled with those regrets. And those regrets come for me from time to time… and today is just a bad time."

Brian's fingers tightened reflexively around Dom's hand. He pressed his lips hard together and glared down at the armrest between them, as though it was the bastard who'd shot him.

"And I lied to you. I lie to everyone I meet here," he said. "Because I'm not an angel. Not really. My regrets weigh me down, and I made a deal. I was worried about my mom. I wanted to see her again. So I agreed to be the first line of defense. I greet people when they die… and some of them I can convince to live again, but most of them are too far gone."

"And me?" Dom asked, his chest tight with anticipation, although he was certain he knew the answer.

Brian lifted his eyes from the armrest and Dom felt like he was being pulled in to those blue blue eyes. "I already told you before," he said. "You're not dead yet, Dom."

But the railing and the bay. Dom shook his head and leaned back from Brian, but Brian kept hold of his hand. No, Dom had driven his car off the bridge and into the bay. He died on impact, or from drowning, or both. But he was dead.

He knit his brow and stared at where Brian's hand held firm to his, where he could almost see his own fingers through Brian's. The cold. The lack of oxygen. Wasn't that what kept hitting him? Was that the bay? But he'd been here for hours. There was no way he was still breathing.

"No," Dom said and shook his head. "I'm dead. I wanted to die."

"But why?" Brian asked, and his grip on Dom's hand was almost painful. "Tell me why, Dom."

Dom wrenched his hand from Brian's fingers and turned to face the track. Why. He'd been avoiding telling Brian since the beginning. Assuming he'd been dead and would never have to face the world again, he'd let himself tell Brian about Mia and about Letty. But if he wasn't dead then…

"My father… There was a bad wreck at the track in January one year," Dom said, surprised by how easy he found the words. "Two people died, burned alive. My parents held a press conference to address the tragedy two days after. On live television, the son of one of the dead drivers opened fire on the room. He killed eight people – my father, my mother, Letty's old man, and the rest of the track's board of directors – before security surrounded him, and then he turned the gun on himself."

Pressing his hands together, Dom remembered being at home, prepping dinner for when his parents got home, and watching the conference. He remembered the first gunshot, the one that went through his father, before the cameras had scrambled to turn away and run. But the stations hadn't been quick enough in turning off the video, and Dom could still hear the screaming and the following seven shots. The only shot he didn't hear was the one that the son had used on himself. The cameras had finally been switched off before then. Part of Dom always wished he could have heard it.

"My parents… My father was my hero, and he died. And I couldn't even get revenge for him. And then the family of the other driver sued us, and I didn't have the money. No one wanted to buy the track, not even the bank, and I was barely out of high school. I didn't have any equity… didn't even really know what equity was. So the bank took the house to pay the settlement and court fees." Dom paused to shake off the tension in his mind, but it didn't budge.

"And you lived out of your car," Brian said, urging the story on. His hand rose up as though to hold Dom's shoulder as Dom had done for him, but he hesitated and then pulled back.

"We lived in the fucking Charger. Mia, two months from graduation, didn't have a home anymore. And it was my fault. I'd never considered saving money before, and it came back to bite me in the ass." Dom rubbed at his left eye even though there were no tears to be had. "If I'd had a better job, maybe we wouldn't have been living in a car. And Mia kept telling me it was fine, that she'd always wanted to know what it would be like to live out of a car, but it was just to make me feel better. And I let her lie to me. But I failed her, and we both knew it, even if she wouldn't admit it. I was supposed to be the head of the family then and I failed."

"But Mia got into college," Brian pointed out, shifting in his seat to be closer to Dom.

"Mia lost all her friends, and I was working all the time so she lost me too. She wrote entrance essays in the backseat of my car and submitted applications at the library and had to get a job to pay the application fees, because all my money was going into the damn track that I couldn't get rid of." Dom took a shaking breath. "Then Mia got the news – college, full ride. And someone finally wanted the track. Everything was looking up, and then I went and screwed that up too."

He remembered the joy of the morning when he finally logged into his bank account and saw all the money sitting there. The payment for the track had gone through. They finally had money. And they could probably buy a house with it. An hour later, Mia opened the email with the good news. And then eight hours after that, everything had been ripped from him again in a rolling car and a deep ditch.

"I had no pillars left to stand on," he said, voice tighter than he wanted. "I just wanted to tell Mia how sorry I was, and I kept thinking about the guy who started it all, who shot my parents and took his own life. And I wondered if he got to see his father after he died, and then if I would get to see Mia and our parents if I died." His gut was tight and his eyes were hot, but he'd thought these things so often that no tears came out. "I just wanted all of them back so much, and I was still living in the car, seeing Mia in all the things she left behind. I felt like I'd been ripped from the lives of everyone I knew, and I'd been trying to fight my way back for half a decade… and I was just so tired."

The night he drove off the bridge, he'd been unable to sleep, stuck staring at one of Mia's hairbrushes. Something so small and stupid. And then he'd been driving, hating the rumble of the rebuilt engine, the click of the refurbished clutch, and hating himself for taking the time and money to even fix the damn car when it wouldn't bring Mia back.

"Dom," Brian said, catching him in his free falling thoughts. "You don't have to be alone anymore. I promise… Letty's waiting for you. Jesse, you remember Jesse, is setting up a race somewhere and wondering where you are. On Sunday, that guy Vince is serving dinner and missing the barbecues and wishing you'd start them up again, because he has a kid now and he misses that sense of community."

"Vince has a kid?" Dom asked, surprised.

Brian's grin was infectious. "Yeah. Yeah he does. And he wants you to meet him."

Dom's grin became slack when he noticed the sun glinting off the announcer's box. It lessened his grin because the box was behind Brian, and yet he could see the sun there… through Brian. Brian didn't seem to notice or care.

"Bri," Dom murmured, reaching out to touch Brian's neck where he could see the seats behind him. "Brian, why are you see-through?"

With a careless shrug, Brian batted away Dom's worrying hand. "You know… I'm not really sure. I told you, I couldn't let you die. In the Sunday room, remember? I almost lost you, but I brought you back." His tone was almost happy, like he was discussing adopting a puppy or something else equally ridiculous to be talking about in that moment. "I've never done that kind of thing before, so I'm not sure what happens now."

"Well stop it," Dom ordered. "It's freaking me out."

That brought a laugh out of Brian, and consequently another smile out of Dom. Then Brian was standing and motioning for Dom to follow suit. "Come with me," he said.

They walked down the stands in silence, Dom increasingly concerned with the transparency of his angel. He felt better, he supposed, now that he'd told Brian everything, now that he'd thought about all that had happened to him. It didn't fix anything, but somehow telling Brian helped more than telling any shrink ever had… and maybe that was because Brian was a friend. He wasn't being paid to listen.

A friend who was losing corporeal form. Dom pressed his lips together tightly.

"Brian," he started as they walked along the asphalt of the track.

"Dom, do me a favor?" Brian asked and turned to walk backwards. The blonde came to a stop by the Charger's passenger door. "I actually planned to race you at some point, but I'm not feeling very good. Drive me around the track."

It was a statement more than a request, but Dom nodded in response anyway. "Sure you don't need to lie down or something?" he asked, getting in the car. Again he was struck by how little he knew of the afterlife's rules. Would resting help someone who was already dead?

"I want to drive," Brian answered, slipping into the car and shutting the door. "And if I can't drive, I want you to drive."

Dom fished the key from his pocket and put it in the ignition. The Charger's engine roared into life and Brian actually pet the dashboard in response, a silly little grin on his stupidly handsome face. The wheel turned smoothly, easing the car into the curve of the track and then they started slowly driving the oval. Half way around, Brian chuckled and shook his head.

"Come on, Dom. You're driving like we're going grocery shopping," he said. "We're racing. I thought you could drive faster."

Something familiar grew in Dom's chest – the excitement of a challenge, and he smirked as he hit the clutch and rounded the corner of the track. The straightaway stretched out before him, and he took in the sight hungrily.

"You want fast?" he asked. "I'll show you fast." And he floored the gas pedal. The car burst forward, eating up the track, and in the passenger seat Brian whooped and hollered.

Faster, faster, faster. They continued to gain speed, almost as though they were truly racing some other phantom cars, and Brian cheered the whole way. On the second lap, Dom took the turn too fast on purpose and the tail end of the Charger scraped the wall. They jerked back and forth as they regained balance and then Dom was doing it again on the next turn.

It felt like stress relief. The car wasn't real and neither was the wall, and any damage to either wouldn't matter. It was a sense of freedom and it filled Dom with a recklessness he would never practice in real life. Never… And yet he'd run off the road.

"Dom," Brian started on lap three. "Do you regret it?"

Foot off the gas, the car sped on momentum alone, and then Dom mentally shook himself and pressed down again.

"That's a stupid question," Dom said and shifted gears. Brian turned calmly to look over at him, completely unfazed by their speed. "Most jumpers realize halfway down that they don't want to die."

"Do you want to die?" Brian asked, leaning back in his seat but not taking his eyes off Dom.

"I can't say I want to live the life I had," Dom admitted, taking the next curve smoothly, no grinding on the wall. "But… Vince always said he hated Sundays and being forced to come to those barbecues. Yet you say he misses them, and he's got a damn kid now. And Letty, I keep thinkin about her sitting on her front porch, staring at the old house, waiting for the Charger to pull up." The Charger slowed slightly. "What did I run away from, Bri?"

"You didn't know, Dom. Nothin to be ashamed of there."

"That don't make it okay," Dom pointed out.

With a slight laugh, Brian said, "No. But what matters is what you do with the information now."

Dom had things he planned to say, questions about consequences and how things worked, but when he turned his head to glance at his passenger, he lost all of it. Brian was there, in the seat, but he was also not there at all. He was like a faded photograph, blurring at the edges and sun bleached in the center.

"Brian?" Dom asked, concern coursing through him, and he took his foot off the gas.

"Keep driving," Brian said, and it was more of an order than anything Brian had ever said. Reflexively, Dom put his foot back down. "Just keep driving."

"And what about you, huh? What happens if I choose to go back? What happens to you?" Dom asked, glaring out at the track as he took another turn.

Shrugging, Brian turned his eyes to the track too. "I've been dead a long time," he said. "I think I gave up my contract when I saved you earlier, but you still had a chance at life. It was you or me. Had to make a call."

"Shitty call, Spilner," Dom grunted. His eyes glanced through the stands as though he'd find some old man sitting there, taking notes on Brian's performance - someone he could convince to let Brian live… in some way or another.

"Well someone had to make it," Brian said. At least he didn't sound apologetic. He didn't regret the decision.

Something clicked for Dom then, and he knit his forehead together in thought. "Do you still have regrets?" he asked.

Brian's eyes were on him again. "What do you mean?"

"Your mom. You watched her get better. Did you get to say goodbye? That bastard, Rocky. You wanted revenge. Do you still regret those two things?" Dom asked. He pressed his lips together tightly and wondered if regrets were how this world worked at all. Were regrets the real reason Brian was stuck there? Was he really disappearing because he'd let them go? And was it possible he'd let them go because Dom pressured him into talking as much as he'd pressured Dom?

"No," Brian said, a small bit of awe in his tone. "Guess I don't."

"And you helped a lot of people come to terms with their own regrets, right? Even if they didn't live afterward?" Despite not being in an actual race, Dom felt like he was running out of time.

"Yeah, I suppose so." Brian shifted in his seat, bringing one leg up on the chair with him. "What's your point?"

Shaking his head, Dom glanced away from the track and over to his passenger. "My point, Brian, is it sounds like you need a new contract. You've done enough, and you want to live, right? Why can I make that choice and not you? So make a deal with whoever it takes. Come back with me."

"Dom," Brian began, shaking his head, but Dom shook his too.

"No, Bri. You've helped people. You helped me. I'm not fixed, but I might be able to handle it better now. I don't want to leave knowing you're just gonna cease to exist." Dom took another turn and could see the marked out finish line ahead of him. The car skidded to a halt.

"You don't know what will happen to me. What if I'm finally going to rest?" Brian asked, and he did sound tired.

"Yeah? And what if you're not? Huh, Brian? What if you're not?" Dom turned completely in his seat to look at the angel. Because that's what he was – an angel. How could he just leave Brian here to fade away, to die? But was there even a way for him to live?

His body was buried somewhere sixty years ago. Four bullet holes in the chest. But Dom didn't want to think about that. He didn't want Brian to be dead. He didn't want him to die. He wanted to bring Brian home to meet Letty.

Home. The word caught him off guard in his own thoughts and he wondered if Letty would let that be true. Could he live with Letty? Or Dom had the money now from selling the track. Maybe he could buy the old house back, start up Sundays again. Maybe Letty could live with him instead. But it was home, and he missed it now more than ever.

For a long second, Brian said nothing, but then he grinned and relaxed into the seat. Part of Dom was sure the grin was in response to Dom's thoughts, but that was impossible… at least in life. "Everything'll work out in the end, Dom. It always does. So stop worrying about everything, about me or anyone else. Drive, Dom. Just drive, and I promise everything will be alright."

It sounded too much like what Brian had said to his mother as he bled out in her arms, the words he'd said in the Sunday room when he'd forgotten where he was. But that was who Brian was, wasn't it? He was the comforter. He made things better… or he at least tried to. He looked out for the feelings of those he cared about.

"Brian, I'm not going back without you," he began, facing the road again, but Brian cut off any further speech.

"Drive fast, Dom." Brian put a hand on the dashboard as though bracing himself. So there was no room for argument, huh? This was it? Then suddenly, Brian shouted. "Drive!"

Dom gripped the steering wheel tightly and floored the gas.

"Brian," he called over the roar of the engine. "Don't fool yourself, Buster. You're a god damn angel." When he looked over at Brian, not watching the finish line rush up at them, he saw the other's wide, curious eyes and he smirked in response. "I've seen your wings."

Brian's lips parted, the beginning of a response. But it was too late.

It felt like Dom crashed into a brick wall where the finish line should be. Everything went dark. Then the freezing cold swarmed in. It was around him, in him, and he felt his whole body convulsing with the need for warmth. And oxygen. He had no oxygen! But this time he couldn't bend over on the asphalt and gasp for air – there was no ground. There was no air.

Something hard and heavy slammed against his chest and he felt numb all over. It hit him again. Again. Again.

He spit up the water that had infected his lungs and then gasped for air, desperate for brain function and the return of his limbs, but even with oxygen, he found movement difficult at best. He wasn't in his car, though. That much he could tell. Instead, his back was on the hard packed earth of the manmade embankment.

Someone was over him, and more someones were coming up behind them. There was a flashing light in the distance.

"Thank God," the person over him exclaimed. They were all wet and so was Dom, and part of him recognized what that meant, but he couldn't focus on it.

"Bri-," Dom tried and then coughed harshly. The someones from the background were upon them, and their hands were all over Dom.

"Who's Bri?" the original person asked – it was a woman. She had a slight Spanish accent and beautiful skin, but with his mind scattered as it was, that was all Dom took notice of. "Was someone else in the car? Who? Who's Bri?"

Foggy from oxygen deprivation and from the chill still holding his body rigid, Dom didn't know what to say. Who was Bri? Had it all been a near-death dream? Or had it been real? And if it had been real, had he just lost his first friend in a decade? Had he lost Brian?

"Angel," Dom said in a breath, unable to find more air than needed for the one word. The woman looked startled and confused, but then the other persons were grabbing her too, dropping a blanket on her shoulders and urging her to her feet, and Dom barely registered that they were EMTs.

All he could think was that somehow, someway, he was alive. And Brian was not. Brian had lied. Everything was not okay.


	6. Chapter 6

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you enjoy this final installment. Four banners for the fic can be seen on the AO3 posting under the penname DLanaDHZ.

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Chapter 6

Dom spent two days in the hospital, recovering from hypothermia and having his mental functions watched in case a lack of oxygen had caused any damage. As soon as he'd been conscious enough to make requests, he had the nurses make a phone call for him.

Letty arrived in less than an hour. She was dressed real professional, which Dom commented on with a teasing grin. He'd never seen her outside of grease stained jeans and tank tops. After slapping him upside the head, she told Dom she'd just come from a manager meeting for the maintenance shop she owned with Jesse.

"Jesse's got a thing for designing fast cars," she said. "He was approached last week about a job. The whole company was. That's where I was before I got the call. Some racing company wants to sign a contract with us."

"Sounds like a good gig. What's holdin things up?" Dom asked.

She looked good. She looked healthy. She definitely looked like her business was going well, and he was happy for her. Her serious eyes stared into his and she cocked an eyebrow.

"You," she said. "For one thing, you pulled me out of the meeting. For another, the racing company…" And then her eyes weren't so serious. They were nostalgic. "They're the ones who bought the track last year. I didn't want to do anything without asking you first… but I couldn't find you."

"Take the job, Letty." Dom held his hand out for her and she slipped her own easily into his. "I'll be alright."

"Big words coming for the guy who disappeared for six years and showed up in a hospital." Letty frowned deeply and gripped his hand tighter. "Speaking of – they said they rescued you from the Charger. How did your car end up in the bay? You've always been a great driver."

With a careless shrug, Dom lied and said, "I was blowin off steam, speeding like a lunatic. Hit something slick in the road – maybe ice. Next thing I knew, I was being given CPR by some sexy Spanish woman."

Snorting, Letty said, "Yeah well that sexy Spanish woman is apparently your head nurse. She met me at the door. You're lucky she was driving by when you had your accident." And the way she said it – accident – made it clear she didn't think there had been one.

Dom frowned and nodded slowly. "I was," he said. But he was thinking about an empty racetrack and an angel with wings that only showed in the dim sun rays streaming into an open garage.

Hours had passed in that place with Brian. Not that time mattered there, but it had been hours. They'd fixed half a car together. They'd had lunch. They'd talked so much. And yet the doctor said he'd only been in the bay for three to five minutes – just long enough for his savior to skid her car to a halt and dive in after him.

Besides that first moment of consciousness, Dom hadn't mentioned Brian to anyone. Even dizzy from medication, he'd kept his mouth shut. Letty watched him with loving eyes and Dom felt the urge to tell her… but it sounded crazy, even to him. He'd probably just dreamt the whole thing as a way to convince himself to live. But it felt so real.

"Hey, drop the long face," Letty said then and knocked him on the shoulder, but her face was long too. "Look. I know it's been a year, but… Well we had a small grieving party for Mia after it happened, without you of course, but I wanted to ask if you planned to do anything more formal. You got her ashes, right? Could we have a service or something? Somethin more official? Everyone is willing to chip in if you don't have the dough. We want to do something nice for her."

But Dom shook his head. "I got the dough," he said, using her lingo. "Money's not a problem anymore. Someone bought the track, remember?"

He smiled gently and Letty smiled back. "Right. So can we? It's your call, Dom."

Dom had been too depressed after Mia died to have a service or see the body one more time. The ashes were in a tiny storage unit because he couldn't bare looking at them either… but now he was glad he'd put them there. If they'd been in the car…

"Yeah," he finally said. "Yeah, she'd like that. Shoulda done it a long time ago."

And then Letty was hugging him, her nice blouse smooth against his arms when he pulled her closer, and God it felt so good. He missed the contact, the familiar scent, the chastising tone. He'd missed all of her, and he almost cried after all this time. Almost.

"I'm sorry," he said, his rough voice even rougher as he hid his face in her hair.

"It's okay," Letty assured him, rubbing his back. "Everything's gonna be okay now."

He still soaked up her embrace, still loved that she was even there, and he listened intently as she started talking about weekly races the track would be holding and catching him up on the lives of their mutual acquaintances, but…

'I promise everything will be alright.'

Her words made him think of Brian Spilner. And so did her update on the lives of his old friends. It was exactly how Brian said it was, and even if Dom had managed to hallucinate the rest of it, he had no way of making up the lives of the people he'd been apart from for so long.

Vince had a son, she said, named Nico. He was named after Dom – Dominic – and Vince always complained that Dom needed to get his ass over to the house to meet the kid. And Jesse… Jesse got noticed by the track's new owners because he organized races all over the city, and he was always saying how Dom could smoke all of those jokers if he ever showed up, and Letty was pretty sure he kept organizing the races in the hopes Dom would show up to one.

Speaking of races, the track hosted them already, but Jesse was gonna be in charge of them as soon as Letty signed the papers.

"You should come by, check it out," she said. "Maybe not week one, but we'll all be there."

"Yeah… maybe I will." Dom pursed his lips slightly and then grunted out, "Gonna need a new car first, though." And Letty chuckled softly.

The first thing Dom did after leaving the hospital was check about his old home. It had been foreclosed on six years ago, and it looked like no one had done more than lease it for a year since then. Letty might have hinted that the neighborhood possibly wasn't very friendly to the people taking up residence in a beloved community member's home. And Dom was both proud and a little ashamed of them, but chose to let pride be the dominating feeling.

Buying the house was almost too easy. The bank that owned it now saw it as a liability because of the neighborhood's personality and was eager to be rid of it, plus the housing market was still shit, so Dom regained his family home for not even half of its true value.

There was no moving truck to signal his return a week after his accident, just a new truck full of the contents of his small storage unit, but people noticed him as he unloaded. At the end of just two hours he was headed outside to grab his last box.

When he stepped outside to get it from the truck, there was someone leaning on the truck bed. Muscled, tattooed, and tan, Vince looked almost the same way he did when Dom left. His hair was neater now, somehow, and he was almost clean shaven, but otherwise he looked the same. Older, but the same.

"So you're back, huh?" Vince asked with a grunt.

"Yeah. Finally caught a break," Dom answered, crossing his arms and standing back about ten feet from his old friend. "So you got a kid, huh?"

"Yeah. Finally found someone willing to put up with me."

The sound of distant cars and the buzzing of afternoon bugs hung between them, but they just stared at each other. Vince had always been hard headed to begin with, and they hadn't seen each other in six years. Dom was under no delusion that he could just waltz back into the life he had back before his parents died, and if Vince didn't welcome him back like Brian seemed to expect him to, Dom would understand.

Vince scoffed and sighed, and then he was pushing off the truck and striding quickly to Dom. He snapped his arms around Dom and embraced him tightly. "It's good to have you back, man. We were worried the next time we'd see you was at your funeral."

A response was forming in Dom's throat, something about the details of Mia's belated wake, but his words were cut off by Letty's voice saying, "It almost was." She was walking across the street from her house, no longer dressed formal but back in the shorts and tank tops Dom expected her to wear in the garage. "Found him in the hospital. Didn't I tell you?"

"No," Vince said, turning to look at her, brow knit together. "Gotta stop keepin secrets like that, Letty. What if the rest of us wanted to visit him?"

Dom couldn't get a word in before someone else was jogging across their lawn to join in on welcoming him home. Letty and Vince were quietly arguing about when a phone call was warranted and when it was best to not alert the whole neighborhood about something, but Dom couldn't break them up because the small group had attracted attention and now more people were showing up.

Most he recognized from before everything happened to him. Some were introduced then, as spouses and children and significant others. And some promised to bring their new additions around when they got home. Someone was already suggesting a big cookout to welcome Dom home, and many voices were in agreement and schedules were being compared and times suggested and who should be invited.

In a way, it was actually like he'd never left, as though the last six years were just a long vacation he'd gone on, and everyone just wanted to see the souvenir photos and ask for the details. Now, more than any time before in his car or any time speaking with Brian, Dom felt ashamed of himself for ever feeling like he was alone in the world. He'd turned his back on all these people, on his neighborhood. And when Jesse showed up that evening, tow truck hauling in the re-re-rebuilt charger, Dom swore he'd never give up on them again. This was his family too.

Each week, he got an invitation to the track races, but for a month, he put it off. He focused on the Charger, improving the engine and the fuel injection and the tires, and that was when he wasn't planning Mia's wake or settling his hospital bills or thanking Elena, the beautiful nurse who'd saved his life.

"Dom, you need to come to the races this Friday," Letty said after a month. "Even if you don't race, you need to come. The owner wants to have a word with you."

"Oh yeah? What does the mighty William O'Conner want with me?" Dom asked, pulling back from the Charger's engine. The car was already perfect, but he kept tweaking it anyway.

"I think he wants to hire you as a manager," Letty said and she was smirking when he looked up at her. "You know that track better than anyone. People trust you, they follow you. He knows that. Just meet with him, see what he has to say. I mean… you can't live off the money he paid you forever."

It was a good offer, Dom reasoned. He'd get to work at the track like he used to, get to be around races and the people he loved. Shutting the hood of the Charger, he then grabbed a towel to wipe off his hands and pretended to consider.

"Yeah. Okay, I'll meet with him. Set it up for me?" he asked and Letty readily agreed.

As she spoke about not worrying and wearing whatever felt comfortable and how good this could be for him, Dom's mind tried to get over the one blockage between Dom and the track. The only reason he hadn't gone to the track yet for the races was Brian. The track would look different for sure, but not that different. He worried that if he went, he'd spend the whole time searching for the angel even as he interacted with other people. Or worse, he'd be on the lookout for puddles of blood and worrying everyone by focusing on everything red near the ground.

A month ago, he avoided that track because of his family, and that still tugged at him, but now it felt like there would just be one more ghost to haunt the place for him… one more person he hadn't been able to save.

On Friday, as he drove to meet William O'Conner, he wondered what happened to his angel. He could still remember the transparency, the exhaustion in Brian's face and voice. He knew he'd never find closure on that meeting without some kind of sign of what happened to Brian. And really he just wanted to know the other was okay in one way or another.

Maybe going to the track was a good idea in that respect too. Maybe there he'd find the sign he was looking for.

Mr. William O'Conner was a businessman inside and out. He wore a suit without the jacket, but it was still a suit, and his office was downstairs by the conference room where all normal managers liked to work. His walls were filled with degrees and awards and commendations and things of the sort, but like Dom's father, he had a few photos of his family – although they were small and not facing the public. Dom only knew they were photos of his family because as he sat down he saw one from an angle that appeared to be Mr. O'Conner, his wife, and a smiling child.

Mr. O'Conner was blonde, his hair slicked back and carefully sculpted. He smiled when he greeted Dom, and it felt genuine and familiar. Through the entire process of Mr. O'Conner purchasing the track, they'd never met in person, but they knew enough about each other to skip the majority of a usual first meeting.

"Will you be joining the races this afternoon, Mr. Toretto?" Mr. O'Conner asked. "I hear you used to be a champion – off the official record."

"Was thinking about it," Dom admitted. His mind wandered briefly to the conference room next door and how clean the glass had looked as he'd passed it to get to the office. "Any good competition?"

Now Mr. O'Conner laughed out loud. "I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but I think our drivers are perhaps the best unofficial group in the States. I'm hoping to convince some of them to join the official team, start earning some real money. My son is supposed to head the team but he claims he won't drive for me unless he has a good team to ride with."

"Your son's a driver?" Dom asked curiously and wondered if O'Conner junior was actually good or just a buster with a rich dad.

"He's the reason I got into the business," Mr. O'Conner admitted. "Boy has racing in his blood. Actually, he'll be at the races today. He usually is. I'd like for you to meet him, if you would."

"Sure thing, Boss," Dom said and shrugged his shoulders.

Without missing a beat at the nickname, Mr. O'Conner jumped up with, "Speaking of Boss, the reason I asked you here today is that my son loves racing and I love supporting him and I've come to really enjoy the track and the sport, but I'm not a racer. I need a team manager, someone to run the human aspect of the business while I run the, well, business side of the business. Your name came up from everyone I asked, and it would be an honor to welcome you back to the track… if you'll have us?"

It was almost what Dom had expected when he walked in the building, but it was also a little bit more. Run the team? That would be more than a little perfect for him. And after six years of his life falling apart, Dom was really starting to wonder what he'd done to suddenly get such opportunities again.

Brian's voice came to him then. 'Everything'll work out in the end, Dom. It always does.'

Everything did seem to be working out. Everything except Brian.

The two men talked about options and specifics of what being manager of the team would mean – how much power Dom would have. A big stipulation by Dom was the he could veto members, with heavy insistence that this included Mr. O'Conner's son if he didn't pull his weight. At the end of the meeting, they had what sounded like a deal, and they planned to regroup in two days after Mr. O'Conner's lawyer had drawn up the official work contract with all of their discussed details added in.

"Thank you, Mr. O'Conner," Dom said as they shook hands. "The opportunity means a lot to me."

"No worries, Mr. Toretto. Now go. The races will have started by now. Go meet the drivers. See if any catch your eye." And the way he said it left no question that he expected Dom to be impressed by the driving of his son.

Doubt still lingering in his mind, Dom left the office and headed for the track, where music and engines could already be heard. It was infinitely different than when he'd been dying. There had been no sound at that track, no energy pulsing through the speakers, no savory smells from the food court. A few people were milling about inside, looking to get something to eat, and Dom looked over each of them, expecting one to be Brian, big, bouncing, blonde curls and all. But no one even came close.

Part of him wanted to skirt by the races, check on the storage area just to assure himself it wasn't the Sunday room anymore, but that was stupid. Of course it wouldn't be the Sunday room. He wasn't dead anymore, and the only dying he was doing was the same as everyone else – the slow progression toward old age.

As soon as he stepped outside, he was drawn into the excitement of the races. The stands had quite a few people in them, but a lot of people were in the center of the track, running back and forth to cheer on the drivers. Dom went up into the stands to watch and spotted Jesse by the garage, talking to some teenager about a red mustang that sat just barely inside, its hood still smoking while two other mechanics started trying to cool it down.

Jesse looked good – a lot better than he had six years ago. At the welcome home cookout, he'd told Dom that he was drug free, which made his smoking habits from six years ago sound a lot more serious than they had been. But whatever changes he'd made in his life… they'd worked for the better.

Cheers erupted as the next race got set up and three cars pulled up to the starting line. These weren't track cars. These were street races being done on an official track. The hopefuls for the new race were a pink Honda S2000, a white Ford Mustang Fastback, and a blue Skyline R34 GT-R. Dom's heart skipped a beat and then the flag dropped and the cars took off down the track.

"Hey stranger," Letty greeted him as she joined him in the stands.

"Hey," Dom replied, distracted. "Who's driving in this race?"

Casting her eyes out over the cars, Letty gave a shrug. "Let's see. Well it's a pretty good line up. The pink one winning is Suki. The white loser is Roman, but if he hears you calling him that he'll think you're too straight. Call him Rome."

"And the Skyline?" Dom asked, trying to control his heart.

That was Brian's Skyline. It couldn't be Brian's Skyline, but it was. The same color. The same model. Same reckless driving. The Skyline gained on the Honda and overtook it, earning the lead.

"Mr. O'Conner's son," Letty said, rolling her shoulders and smiling out at the cars. "He's pretty good. You should see him in a stock car, but that Skyline is his baby. Kinda like you and the Charger. You take the manager job and he's gonna be the first person in line to be officially signed to the team."

"What's his name?" Dom asked. The race was almost over and Dom started to descend the stands, heading for the finish line.

"Hm?" Letty hurried to follow him and hit the asphalt just behind him. Her answer was drowned out by the cheers of O'Conner Jr. winning the race, and Dom had to stop and let her catch up so he could ask her again. "Brian!" she shouted over the roar of the spectators. "Brian O'Conner!"

Brian.

Dom shoved his way through the crowd around the idling cars, Letty calling out after him. Brian's last name was Spilner and he died in the forties. But Brian drove a blue Skyline, and so did this Brian and-

He found the center of the crowd. Suki was leaning on her car, smiling and chatting with some girls about the engine. The other two drivers, one dark skinned and one light, were high fiving and slapping each other on the shoulders and being jostled by their friends, and neither had blonde curls but the light skinned man's shoulders looked familiar and Dom took a few steps closer, hesitantly.

The other man turned, laughing, and caught sight of Dom. His wide smile was familiar, like his father's, but there was no mistaking those cheekbones, those eyes. He'd cut his curls off, but this was Brian. When Brian spotted Dom, his smile faltered ever so slightly, and then cranked back up as though nothing had happened to spook him.

"Brian," Dom called out, taking a few more steps closer.

"Hey," Brian greeted. He held out his hand toward Dom. "Dominic Toretto, right?"

Dom's heart fell. It looked like Brian, but… He didn't know Dom.

"Yeah." He took Brian's hand in his and they shook, and Dom was trapped between disappointment and convincing himself it didn't change anything. Disappointment was winning. "Good race."

"Thanks. Suki's great too, and a really good sport. Right, Suki?" Brian asked, calling out to the other driver. Suki was too far away to hear properly, but she smiled and waved at Brian when she heard her name. No hard feelings there.

"And what am I, Bri? Moldy cheese?" the dark skinned man asked, right behind Brian. "Not gonna tell the new boss man about me too? I see how it is. Ladies gettin all the love and attention these days."

Brian laughed and, despite the lack of recognition from him, it made Dom's chest tighten pleasantly. "Calm down, Rome, I got you. Okay so Rome is a great driver too. He can drive circles around most people. Except me."

"Yeah, aight. I see how it's gonna be, Bri. You be like that," Roman said, but when Brian turned to look at him, the other smiled and the two high fived again, so Dom wasn't worried about him being embittered.

It was unbelievable. He was seeing Brian among other people, laughing, smiling, solid and real. He'd asked for a sign that Brian was alright and he got Brian, living a new life. It was more than he asked for but all that he wanted… except that Brian didn't know him.

"So you liked the race, huh?" Brian asked, bringing Dom's attention back. "Think I might make the team, Mr. Manager?"

"Yeah," Dom answered gruffly. "I don't sign that contract for a couple of days, so I'm not your manager yet, but I'd say you're definitely invited to tryouts."

Someone behind Brian shouted as they were lifted off their feet and it was loud enough to draw Dom's attention away again. Past them he could see the storage door. He remembered Brian in there, laughing full and hearty after tricking Dom, and he was glad that Brian was being given a chance to have that carefree smile more often.

"Sunday," Brian said, startling Dom. "You're gonna sign then, right? I think you'll make a great manager. I've heard a lot about you."

Grunting, Dom shrugged. "Well that seems like the plan," he agreed.

Jesse's voice called out over the speakers for the cars to move off the track and make way for the next race, and Suki and Rome moved away quickly for their vehicles. Brian took a step away but hesitated there.

"Don't worry," he said. "Everything's gonna work out fine. With the contract I mean."

His smile hid something, and it gave Dom hope. For a moment he didn't know what the hope was for – A good job? An easy life? A fulfilling career? – but none of those matched Brian's smile. The blonde took another step back when Rome honked his horn before driving away. He glanced toward his car, glanced past it toward the stands and the storage door.

"I mean," he said, looking back at Dom, "Nothing too bad happens on Sunday, right?"

And now the sneaky undertone to Brian's smile grabbed at him with the full force of its meaning. This was Brian O'Conner, son of legit businessman William O'Conner, but this was still Brian Spilner, son of a good-for-nothing nobody from the forties. And maybe he really did remember that.

Brian stepped away from his car, more into Dom's personal space, and he lowered his voice. "I told you, didn't I?" he asked, and when he smiled at Dom, Dom smiled back. Because Brian had told him so many things, and they were all true.

"Yeah," Dom said as Brian took a step back again, Jesse's voice calling out again on the speakers. He urged Brian to move his car and for the spectators to get off the track. "Yeah, nothing too bad happens on Sunday," Dom agreed. He caught Brian by the bicep as the other tried to leave again. "Hey, speaking of Sunday, we're having a barbeque. Think you can make it?"

The smile he received was wide and warm, and Brian grabbed at Dom's bicep too, aligning their arms. "I'll be there like my life depends on it," he said, a joke in his voice. Then he pulled his arm from Dom's, their arms sliding against each other the whole way.

Brian finally got back in his Skyline and drove it to the pit area, and Letty was finally able to get up next to Dom again, questioning his attitude, and Brian looked over at Dom before Rome garnered his attention full time, and Letty was snapping her fingers in Dom's face and demanding his concentration, and… and yeah. Maybe everything would be alright in the end.

* * *

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